


a little wicked, just like you said

by youatemytailor



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, SILVER'S HALF NAKED A LOT AND FLINT'S LESS THAN HAPPY ABOUT IT except he's really happy about it, don't even ask, flint's really mad until he's really horny and then he's less mad but more horny, i don't even know man i'm trying to heal my soul after 410 okay, lots of cursing because i assume flint says fuck like 800 times a second in his head, me too tbh, naked arm wrestling, silverflint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 18:30:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10599696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youatemytailor/pseuds/youatemytailor
Summary: “Best of three, then,” Silver says, clapping and rubbing his hands together. “When you lose, you–”“When?”“If,”Silver corrects, immediately, but with a tone like he’s indulging the idea of Flint winning rather than actually entertaining it. “If you lose, you’ll have to remove an article of clothing.”Flint stares at him. Silver smiles back, mouth like a scythe.“Excuse me?”If Silver’s got the balls to organise a rum soaked nudist arm-wrestling ring on Flint’s fucking ship, in the middle of the fucking night, in the middle of the fucking ocean, he’d better stand up and take the credit for it - and whatever else may be coming his way.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is. It's entirely Mich's fault, so blame her. Tumblr prompt - "Why does anyone have to be naked?" Mid S2 Silverflint.

Some peace and fucking quiet, that's all Flint's ever wanted, really.

As insane as it sounds to look for either of those things aboard a ship full of pirates, ever since he’d been in the navy Flint had found it strangely comforting to be on a ship at night. There was something extraordinary about a cramped and dirty place formerly bustling with life and too much of it; too much noise _,_ too many men—all shouting and running and fighting to stay alive during the day—suddenly yielding to silence in the dark.  

 

It didn't much matter who sailed them, because all ships were the same come nightfall; a cabin full of beasts, drawing breath in unison under the same hull. The ship groaning around them, as if they were all sleeping in the belly of some larger monster that had swallowed them whole.

Flint did his best thinking after the sun went down. Planned the better part of his most successful schemes long after the crew had gone to bed; kept those precious hours of solitude to himself as if he were guarding some priceless treasure trove. Barring bad weather or a sudden threat, nobody bothered him after dark. Nobody expected anything of him, pulled at his sleeve to get his attention, or asked him to solve petty squabbles between men he'd much rather just throw overboard rather than entertain.

Nobody looked at him. The measure of comfort that single fact afforded was immense. Even now, after all this time aboard with the same crew, he felt it, sometimes; the whispering, the shifty eyes. You get looked at with fear long enough and it was enough to turn you into something fearsome. 

It was nice, in his cabin. Blissfully quiet. Peaceful. 

Usually. Not tonight. 

As it happens, the ship is so fucking loud tonight that there is no semblance of comfort or quiet or peace or any fucking thing of the sort to be found for miles. Happy yelling and shouting and singing permeates the entire place, steadily filtering into Flint's cabin through the bolted door.  The crew enjoying themselves, for a change. 

Flint has decided to allow it. It’s under control. The men have been so on edge for the past few days that he's choosing not to begrudge them some much needed recreation. If only to keep their tempers in check and their heads cool for what's coming. 

So, he tries. Grits his teeth against the noise and does his best to ignore it. It works; he manages to plan their maneuvers for the week, even gets to look over the proposals for repairs that De Groot presented to him earlier in the day, all with minimal interruption. A few hours of this kind of grunt work and Flint has all but forgotten that there was any noise to start with. 

It's later, far into the night, as Flint is hunched over charts and busy planning the quickest route back to Nassau that it happens; there's a sudden howl of laughter from deep inside the hull. Flint starts like he's been hit and his hand flinches; the caliper in it bites all the way through the map spread out on the table beneath him, slicing it clean in half. 

A quiet breeze wafts through the open window and the map flutters, landing in pieces on the floor, and Flint takes a single, shocked step back. He stares at the caliper, standing on two legs, lodged deep into his desk. 

The fucking thing is—it's  _vibrating_.

The noise he was blocking out comes rushing back, then, and all of a sudden he's deaf with it; the shouting, the singing, the _stomping._

Before he knows it Flint is storming out of the cabin. Not feeling much of anything, really, except for the blinding certainty that _he's going to kill the lot of them_ , their fucking tempers be  _damned_. Wondering idly how he'll manage to find a new, living crew on such short notice, he makes his way through the ship—unseeing,  _seething—_ until he gets below deck and he is greeted with a sight that stops short any further thoughts from forming in his head. 

It's utter pandemonium.

Fucking  _chaos_.

The men are gathered under the low awning of the mess hall; all thirty fucking two of them. All drunk, too, by the looks of it; by turns leaning against the curved walls, swinging in hammocks, towering and cheering and yelling over the table they've wrangled into the centre of the room like the pirate equivalent of the goddamned Roman Colosseum. In the midst of it, right in the eye of the storm, sits a grinning Silver—and Flint should have _known_ , really—his mouth gaping open and halfway through a thunderous laugh. Dooley is slumped in the seat opposite, his boyish face red and straining, while both their elbows are braced against the table in between, their hands locked firmly together. 

Arm wrestling. They are fucking arm wrestling.

Flint is beside himself with rage again for a single bright moment—livid with disbelief that the crew would do this, that Silver would do this, right _now_ , tonight of  _all fucking nights—_ when his eyes adjust to the light and he realises that Silver  _doesn't have a fucking shirt on._ The sight freezes Flint in place, nestled in the darkness of the doorway. The bristling fury he was feeling a second ago suddenly replaced by a horrifying itch in his hands, Flint watches, transfixed. Even from this distance, it's pretty clear that Silver and Dooley are not even remotely equally matched. Silver doesn't even look like he's trying all that hard; smiling widely into his cup while rum sloshes all over his bare chest with the effort of using both hands at the same time. Dooley, in contrast, looks as if half of his body is in a vice; the vein in his forehead is bulging dangerously, while his free palm is splayed against the table for extra support. 

The cheering around them grows louder as the seconds pass, reaches an absolutely deafening crescendo when—for a moment—it appears as though Dooley has gained the upper hand; Silver's arm begins to slowly tip outwards at the elbow. Dooley gets a single second to smile shakily, stupid with disbelief at his own fortune, before Silver catches his eye, grins like a shark, and kisses him full on the mouth. 

The crowd  _roars_. Flint's shoulder slides off the doorway and he almost falls over.

Dooley gives a flustered yelp when they finally break apart, and Silver's still smiling, mouth red, as he seizes the moment to slam Dooley's arm backwards onto the table, claiming victory. The whole ship shudders with another cheer from the crowd and Silver shoots up from his seat into the arms of his adoring fans; countless hands clapping his back, ten men trying to pour him a drink at the same time. There is no one left unaffected by the sight; in the far corner De Groot is in hysterics, laughing so hard that he's practically crying, Joji keeping him upright with an arm around his shoulders.

Joji is  _smiling_. 

What the  _fuck_. 

"Well, then!" Silver bellows, slamming his fist down onto the table. Dooley's face down against it and his head bounces on impact. "Who's next?"

The way his voice is carrying, Silver's clearly the singular source of most—if not _all_ of the noise in the room. Flint tries to will himself into feeling angry again but comes up horrifyingly empty. He thinks of the map, lying on the ground in tatters. Nothing. He thinks of the quiet he wanted. The peace. 

_Not a fucking thing._

Except, there's something in his gut; twisting, over and over and over again like a wrung neck. He feels dizzy with it; the sight of Silver standing there, among the men, half naked and boasting like a fucking peacock.

As if on cue, Silver throws his head back, his hair hanging down his nape; his neck shining with sweat in the dim light. "I _said_ ," he yells, stomping his feet as if he weren't making enough _goddamned noise already_ , "Who's next?"

Nobody steps up. The cheering continues, followed by mirroring stomps. They still haven't noticed Flint’s presence in the doorway. Not that they’d notice if the ship were on fire beneath them with the amount of rum they’d clearly been drinking. If the absurdly red flush on his chest is any indication Silver has imbibed half the ship’s reserves himself, but his balance is barely affected as he spins around the room, on the hunt for his next competitor.

The men all take a step back as Silver walks among them, resolutely avoiding his eyes; clearly nobody wants to be the next Dooley. At a loss Silver grabs Billy by the shoulders and attempts to convince him, and Billy's still resisting—though not actually moving a single inch despite Silver's efforts—when a nearby lantern swings with the tide and a shaft of light hits Silver’s shoulders, illuminating him in the darkness. Flint sees only the dimples in the small of Silver's back, slick with sweat and leading down further into the swell of his trousers. 

Flint goes blind for an entirely different reason, then. His fingers dig into the door frame for life. 

Finally giving up and releasing a wholly non-cooperative Billy, Silver turns around. "No challengers?” he roars, disbelieving. “A fearsome, dreaded pirate crew the lot of you—you’ve killed strangers with your bare hands! You are  _hard men_! I've been reliably told that no one here fears  _ships_ , or  _guns_ , or  _swords_ , and yet! There is not one single soul this godforsaken ship who will face _me_?" 

That's it.  Flint's own words coming out of Silver's kiss-reddened mouth; that's the last straw in an entire night full of last straws. Flint pushes off, straightens up, and steps forward into the light.

Silence falls slowly at first, and then all at once. The men closest to the entrance go mute immediately, the shock of suddenly seeing Flint in their midst knocking from one man into the next like dominoes tipping over. It engulfs the room, eventually, until Silver's left standing alone and confused in the silence. A single panicked glance from Muldoon later and Silver whips around so fast that he looks as if he might fall over. Instead he stands there teetering on one leg, bare chest heaving,  _shining,_ and there's a second of hesitation where he appears to be genuinely  _terrified_ beneath the pink in his cheeks, before his face splits into a shit-eating, lopsided grin.

" _Captain!_ " he shouts. After taking in Flint's scowl, in a much lower tone—but still so smarmy Flint wants choke him right then and there—he says, "My _sincerest_ apologies, did we wake you?"

Flint is certain he's never going to sleep again. He grits his teeth. "Just what the  _fuck_ do you think you’re doing?"

If Silver's got the balls to organise a rum soaked arm-wrestling ring on Flint's fucking ship, in the middle of the fucking night, in the _middle of the fucking ocean_ , he’d better stand up and take credit for it; he better have the guts to  _own_ it. 

"Well," Silver says reasonably, gesturing at the table, "Dooley here bet me three pieces he could take me on. Clearly, he was mistaken. Weren’t you, Dooley?"

The aforementioned Dooley, still laying face-down and cradling his losing arm, groans into the table in response. 

"I see," Flint says. He unsticks himself from the ground and steps into the centre of the room, the crew parting like the sea to make way. "Clearly, he didn't think you'd  _cheat_."

Encircled by the crowd now, Flint is all the more aware that the whole crew is watching his every move. The men closest to the table shift back a single step as if suddenly untethered and about to bolt from the room. Muldoon, at Silver’s side and as pink with drink as his friend, audibly gulps.

They are all terrified. All of them, that is, except Silver.

"That's harsh, Captain," he says, throwing his legs over the side of his chair to sit down again. "I'd hardly call a friendly kiss cheating. Would you, Dooley?" 

Dead to the world, Dooley just groans unintelligibly. 

“Come, now,” Silver says, leaning forward to pat Dooley’s arm. “You enjoyed it. Plus, you weren't half bad. I have to say, you've soft lips for a pirat—”

“ _Enough_ ," Flint snaps. 

Flint's left thigh is now flush with the side of the table. Arms crossed, he's standing, hovering, close enough that he can see the fine hairs curling with sweat at Silver's temples. He means to be intimidating, perhaps scare the men into running off; perhaps scare Silver into _shutting his fucking mouth_. End this ridiculous affair here and now. Go back to his cabin, fix his damned map somehow so he can get them all home safely. 

The plan…backfires, somewhat.

For a moment Silver just stares, right at the point where Flint's leg meets the table. The moment drags, too long, and Silver's gaze begins to trail upwards, slowly, along the length of Flint’s body—catching for beats at Flint's belt, his arms crossed over his chest, his neck—before finally coming to rest on Flint's face. Whatever Silver sees there he seems to enjoy tremendously because the bastard has the balls to fucking  _smirk_ at him, then; eyes hooded with drink and mirth and something else.

"Well, Captain,” he says, and he sways slightly, and Flint can't tell if it's an act or not, “It is all a man can do to use the tools that God has given him, no? Tell me, how does that amount to cheating?”

_Christ_. It hits Flint like blow to the back of the head; his blood runs so hot for a second—looking at the line of Silver's throat, his fucking grinning  _mouth—_ that he thinks he might just go up in flames, engulf the room, sink the ship from underneath them all. The urge to do something tremendously stupid pulls from the centre of his body, from right around his navel; stupider than hiring a cook who can't cook, stupider than all the men currently in the room; stupider than fucking walking into the room in the first place. It is remarkably similar to how he feels right before a hunt; hungry and wanting and on the other side of fear. 

The rising heat is doused, somewhat, as Dooley shifts in his drunken haze and tips over a cup on the table. The world, the room—the _crew—_ suddenly comes back into focus. So, rather than surge forward and cross off one of the stupid things on a long list of stupid fucking things that Flint wants to do, he peels his eyes away from Silver's neck, shoves Dooley over and sits down next to him.  

Silver gapes, as if Flint has sprouted a second head. "Are you  _challenging_ me, Captain?"

He looks delighted, about to hop in his seat with excitement. There it is, again; Flint wants to reach across the table and fist his hand right into Silver's bouncing hair. 

"If it'll end this, then yes." 

Dropped from the knife's edge, the crowd breathes again. They begin to edge closer to the table, gathering around once more.

"Well," Silver says boisterously, "If you think you can unseat the reigning champ, then by God,  _please—_ give me a whirl." 

Booming laughter, of course; the men are relaxing, starting to talk, starting to drink again, but Flint doesn't hear any of it. Only  _please_ and  _whirl_ before blood rushes to the lower half of his body so quickly that it threatens to knock him out. Flint suddenly wants to tip forward over the table and _bite_ him—to suck on the hollow of his obscenely shiny fucking throat and mark him, there. Turned half away from Flint and still riling up the crowd, Silver catches his expression and smirks—a sharp, lethal thing, hidden from the crew by his stupid head of hair.  

“Captain?” he prompts, then, the  _shit_. “What say you? Want to have a go?”

"Alright,” Flint says, because he'll be goddamned if he backs down now. “I’ll have a go.”

As the crowd around them draws in even closer, Flint sets about rolling the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. Silver openly stares the entire time, as if it were a show—which it kind of is, really; heat rises up in Flint's gut again under his gaze.

Dooley's half-unconscious at this point and keeps tipping over into Flint's side. One look from Flint and Billy cuts through the crowd to throw an arm around Dooley, helping him to his feet and clearing the table in the process.

"Best of three, then," Silver says, clapping and rubbing his hands together once Flint’s done preparing. "When you lose a round—"

" _When_?" 

" _If_ ," Silver corrects, immediately, but with a tone like he's only indulging the idea of Flint winning rather than actually entertaining it. Flint's sure it's to rile him up. It works. "If you lose a round, you'll have to remove an article of clothing." 

Flint stares at him. Silver smiles back, mouth like a scythe.

"Excuse me?"

"You lose, you lose your shirt."

There's a lilting pause. The crew collectively draws a breath, holds it, as if expecting Flint to fly off the handle. Unaffected, Silver doesn't break eye contact, just continues to smile inoffensively until; "Speaking of shirts, hold on—" he hops in his seat, turning around to the crowd, "Dooley—where's—hey! Rules are rules! Off!" 

Dooley, now standing with Billy in the far corner, begins to half-heartedly drag his shirt over his head with a sleepy groan. It gets stuck around the top of his head, though, the state he's in, so Billy has to help him out. He goes a little pink in the cheeks in the process. 

Flint gapes at the back of Silver's head. "Why in the hell—why does  _anyone_ have to be naked?!" 

It comes out of his mouth a little more sputtery and high-pitched than he intended, but— _Christ_. This was a mistake. A total and catastrophic mistake. Fuck the map, he should have just stayed in his cabin. He quickly glances around in a panic, and sure enough, half the crew is shirtless. Some are missing their boots.  

"Strip arm wrestling!" Silver declares happily, and the crowd whoops as he turns back around to face Flint. At the sight of Flint's expression Silver immediately pinches two cups from the end of the table and pours Flint a generous heap of rum from the bottle between his feet. "It's a game of my own invention, Captain. Genius, if I do say so myself. Don't you agree?"

Without thinking, Flint downs his rum in one go. "It's idiotic," he croaks. He feels slightly better with the liquor grounding him, though, and so he downs the second glass Silver eagerly pours him, right after the first. 

The entire crew is staring at them now. Flint does not know how he walked in here intending to throw the lot of them overboard for making noise and fucking up his map and instead ended up cornered with his back to a wall. This whole situation is so far against his better judgment that it's not even remotely in the same vicinity as good sense. Not even distant neighbours. It dawns on him, then, watching a dark smile stretch itself across Silver’s mouth at the sight of Flint’s shock, that most situations end up _exactly_ the way that John Silver engineers them to be.

There's equal parts lies and honesty, in that smile. 

It’s maddening; it’s fucking  _exhilarating_. 

"Well," Flint says, clearing his throat. He knows as he speaks that somewhere down the line, he's going to regret this moment. Possibly forever, likely longer. "On with it, then." 

More cheering. Silver's answering smile is bright as the sun as he leans over and clasps his hand around Flint's, his grip strong and warm and sticky with rum. "Mr. De Groot, if you would do the honours, please." 

Summoned, De Groot straightens up from where he was still leaning—more like sleeping—on Joji and ambles over. "Gentlemen," he slurs, and Flint cannot for the life of him think of anything less gentlemanly than _this_ , "I want a clean match. No biting. No kicking. No kissing."

"Wait a _second_ , I never agreed to no kissi—"

Flint throws his weight and slams Silver's arm down against the table, hard. Every cup on its surface clatters to the floor and rum sloshes down the front of Flint's trousers, seeps warm into his boots, but it's worth it just to see Silver's face when he looks over a moment later, completely aghast. 

There's a shocked second of silence. " _Ow,_ " Silver says, and the crowd is roaring again. 

Someone whoops enthusiastically and claps Flint on the back, while a voice that sounds a lot like Dooley cheers loudest about vengeance being sweet in the background. Flint resists the urge to turn around but he lets his mouth hook up, just barely. "Best of three, you said?" 

Half his body still facing De Groot and his arm akimbo, Silver keeps staring at Flint. He doesn't lower his gaze as he holds his free hand out; someone hands him a cup of rum out of thin air, which he downs, and rum rushes down the side of his mouth, curves over his jaw, slides down his neck. His other hand is still trapped hot under Flint's and unmoving. When the cup is empty Silver lets it fall to the floor, and proceeds to wipe his mouth on the inside of his palm—and it's  _obscene_ , Flint thinks, the sound that makes, even over the shouting crowd—before squeezing Flint's hand and bringing both of their forearms to stand upright again. He rolls his wrist in Flint's grip for good measure, groaning as if it were injured on impact.

Flint wants to kick up out of his seat. He wants to tackle Silver to the  _ground_.

"Mr. De Groot," Silver says, voice hoarse, and the crew falls halfway silent to listen to him. "Please control your contestant. I believe he is cheating." 

"Mr. De Groot," Flint says, in the same tone and not breaking eye contact, "Please tell Mr. Silver that according to the rules of his game,  _I_  believe I'm owed his boots.”

De Groot pitches forward and nods, solemn, as if this is the most serious order Flint's ever given him. God, they're all fucking drunk. "Mr. Silver, if you would. Rules are rules." 

Amidst renewed cheering and whistling, boots go flying halfway across the room as Silver peels them off with his feet without releasing Flint's hand. "There," he says, turning towards Flint completely at last. "Your pound of flesh. Now. What was that about cheating?" 

Flint shrugs, and his fingers twitch on his thigh with the urge to wipe off the remaining rum glistening on Silver's chin. Replace his hand with his mouth, after. "Not my fault you weren't paying attention."  

"Well,  _Captain_ ," Silver says, and his eyes actually stutter down to Flint's mouth before lifting to look at him in the eyes again. He's leaning so far forward Flint can smell the rum on his breath, can see the flutter of his goddamned eyelashes. "You've got my full fucking attention now. What are you gonna do with it?"

Flint smiles, full, and he thinks—for a moment—that he might actually be drunk, too. 

“I’ve got some ideas,” he says.

Silver grins, like a wolf, before pinning Flint's forearm to the table with a laugh.

* * *

It's a good night, all things considered. The crew is still alive by the end, though passed out in various corners of the ship, snoring like beasts. All have succumbed, as always, to silence. 

It's somewhat of a different story in the Captain's cabin. Within an hour of their epic clash of arms Silver is writhing in Flint’s bed, _moaning;_ Flint sucking a bruise into the hollow of his rum-tasting throat, his hands finally gripping Silver’s stupid, _stupid_ hair.

“You know—” Silver pants into the night, because of course he wants to _fucking speak right now_ , with Flint’s teeth nipping around the tender flesh of his ear. No self-preservation instinct, whatsoever. Mercifully he seems to lose his trail of thought when Flint bites the cord of muscle on the side of his neck, and succumbs to non-verbal groaning entirely when Flint moves to plant wet kisses over the bruises of his own making on Silver's chest thereafter.  

The silence does not last long. Flint is half-way down Silver's body, trying not to get distracted on the way by juts of bone and muscle that demand attention when;

“I'm onto you, Captain—fuck _,_ do that again, _fuck—_ for all your moral talk, you—you  _cheated—_ ”

In a flash, Flint crawls back up, pulls at Silver's hair, and finds his hot mouth in the dark instead.

This is clearly the superior method of keeping Silver quiet. Flint licks into him, sucks on his bottom lip, and aside from a few keening noises in the back of his throat, aside from the scratch of his blunt nails down the slope of Flint's shoulders, Silver is blissfully reticent all of a sudden. If Flint had known that this was all it took to get Silver to shut up he would have done it the moment they met. Likely could have saved himself at least fifty headaches.

When they break apart for breath, Flint points to his own heaving chest, and says, like it should be the obvious answer to Silver's accusation; 

“ _Pirate_.”

As it turns out, Silver's huffed laugh against Flint's neck is a better sound than any kind of silence. 

**Author's Note:**

> And they live happily ever after, the end. I told you I was in denial. 
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](https://jamesvflint.tumblr.com) for more senseless silverflint screaming.


End file.
